Huawei Mate 60 Pro teardown reveals 47% Chinese parts in phone

By Kate Yuan

(JW Insights) Nov 13 -- Nikkei Asia reported a teardown on China’s Huawei Technologies’ recently released Mate 60 Pro, which shows an increasingly sourced components for its smartphones in China and the Chinese parts constitute 47% on a value basis -- up 18 percentage points from a model analyzed three years ago.

Fomalhaut, a research firm, estimated the total cost of Mate 60 Pro parts at $422. In terms of share by country, China led at 47%. The Chinese smartphone maker's percentage of domestically made components climbed by 18 points from the similarly priced Mate 40 Pro launched in fall 2020, when the impact of U.S. sanctions was still limited. This teardown shows that China has made rapid technological advances since the U.S. intensified export restrictions on cutting-edge equipment and software in 2019, said the Nikkei Asia report on November 13.

The increased share of Chinese components resulted largely from Huawei switching suppliers for the organic light-emitting diode display -- the phone's costliest component -- from South Korea's LG Display to BOE Technology Group.

BOE is making inroads into the smartphone display market dominated by LG and Samsung Electronics with a reputation for quality, but it lags in terms of mass production capacity.

"The question is the extent to which [BOE] will be able to supply Huawei when its shipment volume recovers," Fomalhaut CEO Minatake Kashio said.

Touch panel components for the Mate 40 Pro were supplied by U.S. developer Synaptics, but Huawei turned to Chinese parts for the Mate 60 Pro. The value of Chinese-made components for the Mate 60 Pro totaled $198, up roughly 90% compared with the Mate 40 Pro.

"It was said that China's own technology would be seven years behind, but it's a surprise that they caught up in five years," Kashio said.

The share of Japanese components in the Mate 60 Pro came to 1%, shrinking from 19% in the Mate 40 Pro. Huawei changed the supplier of the camera image sensor from Sony Group to Samsung. The share of South Korean parts increased 5 points to 36%, said the Nikkei Asia report.